Genma Saotome (Continuum-32145896)
Genma Saotome (早乙女玄馬, Saotome Genma?) is the father of Ranma Saotome. He is married to Nodoka Saotome and is a former fellow student of Happosai's along with his old friend and prospective in-law, Soun Tendo. Genma can translate into "dark or mysterious horse". Saotome means "rice-planting girl", which applies more to Ranma's cursed condition. Appearance A stocky, middle aged man, Genma wears glasses with a frame that wraps around his ears, a white bandana that covers his head, and a white gi. He used to have hair, but is now completely bald. As a panda, he normally walks upright and will use signs to communicate. A common means for Genma to avoid answering embarrassing questions or temporarily dodge responsibility is to turn into his cursed form and play with a ball. He is much more comfortable with his cursed form than Ranma, although he does not have as many issues and problems with it as Ranma does with his. History During the time when Genma took Ranma on a decade-long training voyage to improve their martial arts skills, he insisted on going to Jusenkyo in China - a place which he believed to be a training ground. However, because of Genma's ignorance of the Chinese language, he did not realize that the ground was unfrequented because it was cursed. Genma realized all too late the mistake he made, after his son knocked him into a cursed spring during this fateful training session. Genma was knocked into Shonmaoniichuan (熊猫溺泉 Xióngmāoníquán), the Spring of Drowned Panda. Due to the nature of the Jusenkyo curse, a victim who falls into the spring is cursed to turn into who or whatever drowned there when doused with cold water. Thus, whenever Genma is splashed with cold water, he becomes a giant panda. Hot water, as with the rest of the Jusenkyo-cursed characters, can change him back into human form. Despite the fact that he and his son were cursed, Genma still brought Ranma back to Japan to fulfill an agreement that he had made with his longtime friend and fellow martial artist Soun Tendo: Ranma would marry one of Soun's daughters and carry on the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts. Character Genma follows his own interpretation of the Anything Goes Martial Arts code, which isn't exactly all that virtuous itself to begin with. Though he himself claims to be a model martial artist, and makes a point of telling Ranma about the right thing to do, it is evident that he does not practice what he preaches. He mostly concerns himself with food, generally looks out for himself, and is an occasional coward when it comes to confrontations with Happposai. When confronted with wrongdoings that he has committed, Genma typically either attempts to justify them through pleading or ridiculous logic, or else tries to either flee from or ignore the problems he has wrought. It is debatable as to whether Genma is so much "evil" as he is "stupid". While definately selfish and cowardly, he usually does not act with deliberate malice. His primary flaws seem to be a strange combination of impulsiveness and stubbornness; Genma can set his goals in a whimsical fashion, and then will immediately start trying to pursue them without further thought and long beyond the point when common sense would suggest he stop. This is exemplified by the matter of Ranma learning the Nekoken; it speaks depths about Genma's character that he would take one look a single page of a training method and immediately force his increasingly-traumatised son to undergo it four times before finally deigning to look at the next page, which warns he should never have started it in the first place. Despite being cursed, Genma actually seems to like his panda form and freely goes about in public in it. He regularly uses it in attempts to circumvent attention when in danger of being taken to task by others by transforming into it and playing with a tire or ball. If he cannot avoid the problem, he often foists the obligation onto Ranma, which usually creates even more chaos. Although pandas cannot talk, Genma is able to communicate his thoughts while in this form by writing on wooden signs (more common in the manga), which he sometimes uses as weapons against Ranma when he is annoyed with his son. In the anime he was once shown as able to produce enough of them to construct an entire boat. Genma's tendency to think both only in the short-term and in regards to himself alone is perhaps the primary sticking point in their relationship, with Ranma begrudging all of the trouble he is forced to endure because of Genma's mistakes. For example when they first met while he was overwhelmed by Nodoka’s charm and poise, her excellent cooking talents, the fact that she came from a moderately wealthy family helped greatly. He thought it would insure a handsome source of income. It was only after he married her that Genma learned that Nodoka’s inheritance would fall upon his son and heir when he reached his eighteenth year of maturity. And Genma will not see a single yen-piece unless Ranma himself decides to share the wealth of this trust fund set up for him by a prosperous Great Uncle. But that is not the entire reason for why he has invested so much of his energy to seeing that Ranma achieves his full potential. If it were just a matter of letting him live to reach full adulthood then he would never have risked his son through so much intensive training. The real reason for why he has done everything that he has done to Ranma isn’t just his selfish desire to make Ranma into a man that other men may envy. In his eyes and mind his son is the ticket to personal redemption, a way of proving to himself and to all others that the sacrifices he has made were ultimately worth something. Genma once had principles and a rudimentary sense of honor. His father was the same way when he was a young man, but both of their lives were badly affected because of Happosai and his training. Genma’s father became a selfish, compulsive, dishonorable wretch, and for a time Genma swore he would never be like him, only to find himself becoming EXACTLY like his father over time when he took up the mantle of the Saotome school from his older brother. He was forced down the same path of shame and degradation from which only the hard lessons of expediency and opportunism would emerge, along with a deep sense of guilt that would harden into self-denial and myopia until he became the compulsive, stupid, self-centered wretch that you see today. The one good thing he has had going for him in this life is Ranma. In his mind he has used Ranma to deflect his guilt by telling himself that his motives are actually altruistic. He became obsessed with raising a son who would become the very model of a martial artist, a warrior without peer who could be everything that Genma felt that he could never become. As long as Ranma is fated for greatness he feels his own life has been justified and rendered some meaning. To that end he has worked and slaved, suffered hunger and privation, even pledged his life and honor to see that Ranma would have the chance of one day surpassing Happosai. To ensure this happened he did the one thing that his own father never had the courage to do and joined with Soun to lock Happosai away for ten long years, thus preventing the ancient Master from interfering in Ranma’s earlier training. Abilities As a former student of the grandmaster martial artist Happosai and the founder of the Saotome Style Anything Goes Martial Arts, Genma is an extremely proficient martial artist. Though he looks hefty, especially in his cursed form, Genma is actually in extremely good shape. Like his son, he has great physical strength, enabling him to punch others a great distance or easily shatter boulders. He possesses enough speed to have kept up with Ranma for some time even after the latter's supersonic Amaguriken training. Genma is also surprisingly agile, capable of powerful leaps. Despite his girth and age, he can withstand great impacts without damage, like falling hundreds of meters into solid stone. His panda form is stronger still (most likely because bears are naturally stronger than humans). As the creator of the Umisenken and the Yamasenken styles Genma is the only one who is a master of both and is extremely proficient in them. However, he has deemed them too violent, powerful, and evil to use and has sealed them away only using it to defeat Cybelle. Category:(Continuum-32145896)